If Deutsche Telekom bought Yahoo, Yahoo would be a US branch of Deutsche Telekom. You're suggesting that Yahoo then wouldn't have to comply with US laws anymore. That's crazy.

A "US branch" is a US corporation, like any other US corporation. The fact that some foreign entity owns the shares makes no difference. If US law enforcement makes a lawful request for information, they have to comply or face the consequences. And that works no differently anywhere else.

We keep hearing about how banks, firms, etc. that were "too big to fail" have ...failed.

You misinterpreted that. People weren't saying that these banks "couldn't" fail, they were saying that they "shouldn't" because they were so big that if they failed, a lot of people would actually have to face the consequences of their stupid decisions. "Too big to fail" was mostly an excuse for Bush and Obama to shove vast amounts of tax dollars into the greedy hands of bank managers.

The interest in Mars seems less about exploration and more about looking for another planet to inhabit. Taken as a whole, this one may be about done, or rather, the human civilizations on it appear to be teetering over the precipice of internal disaster.

Humanity is doing better than ever before in its history, no teetering and no looming disaster. Even the naysayers and Luddites are actually going down in numbers (much to the chagrin of religious nuts of both the Christian and the global warming persuasion).

Sorry, but no other country tries to extend their laws outside their borders as US does. US seems to think that their laws trump any local laws of any other country whenever they see fit.

US law applies exactly when the US is in a position to enforce it, just like German law, French law, Russian law, and North Korean law.

That is a delusion of grandeur that may still prove to be its downfall.

It's not a "delusion" if you can make it stick.

1. Enforcing judgements is not the same as knocking on some business' door in Brussels and saying give us your data, or else.

Actually, the set of laws you can meaningfully pass is the same as the set of laws you can meaningfully enforce.

2. Yes, exactly like that. It was bad then, it's just as bad now.

Nonsense. Europeans forced other nations to comply with their self-serving laws at the barrel of a gun. The US is engaged in law enforcement and anti-terrorism activity, and any company that doesn't want to comply simply has to close its US subsidiary.

What makes you think the EU doesn't do this? Nations like France and Germany probably don't bother with such niceties as legal orders to reveal this data, they just put government operatives into German subsidiaries and have them take whatever they want.

Or, to use a car analogy, how would you like it if the government of Saudi Arabia could stop your car from working, in case a woman drove it, because that was the price for allowing the car company to also sell cars there?

If the Saudis want to impose this condition on Ford, Ford has a clear choice: sell cars in Saudi Arabia and comply with their laws, or sell cars in the US and comply with US laws. It can't to both. Where's the problem?

And I certainly intent to blame America for that.

You can join everybody from Hitler to Putin in blaming America for everything; Americans don't give a damn.

There are no sea kittens involved, so that's OK with PETA.

Do US laws apply to EU companies, IN the EU, just because they have a US branch?

Yes, they do, because if they have a US branch, the US can enforce judgments against those companies. That's how laws and jurisdictions work. It works the other way around too.

Just in case you're unclear, try switching the US and the EU, see how that feels.

You mean, the kind of self-serving arrogance with which Europeans have been imposing their cultures, languages, laws, and businesses on the rest world since the 15th century? I don't need to imagine, it's in the history books.

Basically, the Americans are saying their laws trumps everybody else, and the cost of doing "systematic business in the United States" is that their laws trump everybody else. Sadly, the US has decided that, the laws of other countries be damned, if you do enough business here you have to do what we say.

Yes, if you do business in the US (any business) you need to comply with US law. It works the same for Europe and other places. The only difference is that the US market is so important that companies can't ignore it, but that's not America's fault, and the US is under no obligation to weaken its laws just because Europeans can't get their act together on competitiveness.

The US can do whatever they feel like doing because Fuck You

Well, Europe dropped the ball in the 20th century, so it got stuck taking care of all these problems. If Europe doesn't like the way the US handles it, all it has to do is get its shit together.

Get used to it... its gonna be a long and twisted road before this crap is over.

Well, it sure beats the "crap" that was going on before. And the way things are going, this will be "over" when the US decides its over, given that Europe and Asia are far more aggressive in restricting the liberty and privacy of their citizens.

European authorities can get personal data on Americans under Europe's (rather bad) laws when that data is hosted on European servers.It's not America's fault that Europeans have, for the most part, failed to create online services that are attractive to people.

If you think the entire planet was like Hawaii back then, you're sadly misinformed.

And if you think the entire planet was a burning hellhole, you're also sadly misinformed.

On balance, the planet was probably somewhat nicer for mammals than it is now.

Unfortunately, it's not just online trolls; the myth of "runaway greenhouse effects" is strong among global warming activists, including people like Hansen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect

There used to be a very simple mechanism for protecting works to become orphaned: authors registered them with the Library of Congress. This also ensured that the work eventually could enter the public domain.

It was greedy European publishers that killed this, and then forced the US to comply. And now they are using orphan works legislation to enrich themselves; if you look at the European proposals for orphan works, they want to charge for the reproduction of such works and then redistribute the money to current publishers and authors. That is not how orphan works are supposed to work.

We should bring back mandatory copyright registration; it's the only sensible way of dealing with orphan works and the public domain.

There's nothing technically new in Apple's patent. What the patent is about is using a well-known wireless charging technique to charge a wireless powered local computing environment (as opposed to some other kind of device).

Apple basically missed the boat on wireless power, and now they are trying to grab whatever ridiculous patent they can to have a little bit of leverage.

Hopefully, the rest of the industry will tell them to go take a hike on making compliant products, and then sue Apple into oblivion for violating existing patents.